Ontmoeting III – Marco Caracciolo

The worlds and narratives of video games brim with waste materials: from postapocalyptic ruins to discarded weapons, games often build on an extractive, accumulative understanding of the material world. But not all video games are alike. This talk shows how games can deploy narrative and gameplay strategies that reveal the creative agency of waste and its significance in times of ecological crisis.

Marco Caracciolo is Associate Professor of English at Ghent University in Belgium. Drawing inspiration from cognitive science, the philosophy of mind, and the environmental humanities, his work explores the forms of experience afforded by narrative in literary fiction and other media (especially video games). He is the author of several books, including most recently Figures of Complexity in Contemporary Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2026).